Privacy Policy

Introduction

ChessBulb ("we", "our", or "us") respects your privacy and is committed to protecting personal data. This Privacy Policy explains what we collect, why we process it, who we share it with, and what rights you have. It is written for our initial launch in Egypt and references Egypt's Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL) and its executive regulations as applicable.

Who is responsible for your data?

The data controller for ChessBulb is the company operating the ChessBulb service (contact details in Contact Support and below). We determine why and how personal data is processed when you use our website, apps, and related services. Contact us.

Information we collect

Account information

When you create and maintain an account, we may collect:

• Name and email address
• Encrypted password or authentication signals from our identity provider
• Role (for example, student, academy staff, or admin)
• Academy branding and business details you provide on your public profile

Payment and billing

Payment card and bank data are collected and processed by our payment service provider. We do not store full card numbers on ChessBulb servers. We do store transaction references, subscription state, and amounts needed to operate billing, settlements, and support.

Usage, product, and security data

Depending on your use, we may process:

• Lesson scheduling, attendance, and session join activity
• Subscription, invoice, and payout-related records
• ChessBulb Classroom session metadata and technical diagnostics (for example, connection quality; voice is not recorded for storage unless we explicitly add an optional recording product and you consent)
• Support tickets, emails, and in-product messages you send us
• IP address, device/browser type, and approximate location derived from network signals for security and anti-abuse

Legal bases and purposes (PDPL)

We process personal data to:

• Perform our contract with you (for example, operating accounts, classrooms, and payments you initiate).
• Comply with legal obligations (for example, tax, financial record-keeping, and responding to lawful requests where applicable).
• Pursue legitimate interests that are not overridden by your rights (for example, fraud prevention, product analytics in aggregated or pseudonymized form, and improving reliability and security), where allowed by law.
• Rely on consent where required (for example, certain marketing messages or non-essential cookies/analytics, when presented through our consent tools).

How we use information

• Provide, operate, and secure the service
• Process payments, subscriptions, refunds, and academy settlements
• Facilitate communication between students, parents/guardians, and academies as you direct
• Measure usage and improve the product; debug incidents
• Communicate service and policy updates
• Comply with applicable law and respond to valid requests

Data sharing and subprocessors

We share data with a limited set of service providers to run ChessBulb (for example, identity, payments, cloud hosting, realtime infrastructure, and analytics). A non-exhaustive list with purposes and links appears on our Subprocessors page. Those providers are bound by contract to use data only to deliver services to us and in line with this policy, subject to their role and applicable law. Subprocessors.

Cross-border transfers

Some subprocessors may process or store data outside Egypt. Where such transfers occur, we take steps required by the PDPL and related regulations, such as using appropriate contractual safeguards and assessing transfer impact where needed.

Retention

We keep personal data only as long as needed for the purposes above, including to resolve disputes, enforce agreements, and meet legal (including financial) retention requirements. Retention periods vary by data category; subscription and money-movement records are kept for at least the period required by applicable law.

Your rights

Subject to conditions and exceptions in the PDPL, you may have rights to request access, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, objection in certain cases, and portability where applicable. You may also withdraw consent when processing is consent-based, without affecting prior lawful processing. If you believe your rights are infringed, you may file a complaint with the competent Egyptian data protection authority when designated.

You can exercise many controls in-product (for example, account settings). You may also contact us at [email protected].

Minors and student users

Where students are children or lack full legal capacity, a parent or guardian may need to create or authorize use of the account, as described in our Minors Policy. Classroom audio is live-only in v1; we design features to limit exposure of minors in line with that policy and applicable law. Minors Policy.

Contact

Questions about this policy: [email protected]. General help: Contact Support. Contact us.